On June 1st we prohibited Imagetwist in Celebrity Pictures because Celebrity Picture moderators became fed up with several posters competing to earn money from posting Imagetwist hosted images. They were posting cropped versions of images, nearly identical images and images artificially enlarged, then they were reporting each others' posts as violating forum rule against posting duplicates.
The good news is that the posting competition ended. The bad news is that we only have 7 or 8 members currently posting in Celebrity Pictures.
Far be it for me to contradict our esteemed admin but that wasn't the only reason we were hacked off with Imagetwist.
Their embedded ads and popups/unders became ever more aggressive. Sometimes there were so many they crashed browsers. Images wouldn't load if they were blocked and some carried adware spyware and malware. We were getting alot of complaints. I reposted one in one of these threads where a members phone crashed trying to open one of their images. it got to the point where i would only open these links in a sandboxed browser.
I attempted to contact Imagetwist several times to discuss these matters, but they never paid me the courtesy of replying. Then someone from Imagetwist contacted me when I started replacing all their links if the adware was invasive or carried nasties. Probably because one of their cash whore members told them I was dumping their lins for Pimp&Host links. He tried to take umbridge but I put him firmly in his place. At that point I tried to negotiate changes that would see them remain, but in the end it was an exercise in futility.
The full transcripts of our discussions are posted in this section somewhere. I'm sure they'll turn up with a simple search. I posted them because someone insinuated I was profiting somehow by trying to find a solution. That pissed me off.
The same fellow from Imagetwist contacted me again a couple of days ago to let me know he had resolved the issue of their site renaming images with gibberish, but at this point I really couldn't care less. It's too little too late. As far as I know their ad policy remains the same and that for me is the thing that really matters. They were, to quote one member, more spammy than the spam posts we ban and remove. Bugger having to deal with that crap again.
As for the loss of posters, the only two who have ceased mass posting are Ogar1 and mathushan, and since all the pair of them ever did was post poor quality stuff taken from social media they are, in my opinion, no great loss in terms of content.
I have seen no appreciable diminution in volume, which is picking up considerably now other poster, previously drowned out by those two, are beginning to become involved.
In fact, all round this has been a positive move, and my only regret, despite my attempts to broker a deal that would have seen imagetwist remain, is that they were not completely removed from this forum. IMO, given the availability of superior and far less invasive hosts, they are a bloody liability that should not be entertained.
BOC
PS: Another bonus is that hardly anyone posts Miley Cyrus pictures anymore. Not having to look at that talentless trailer park ladyboy is a definite plus.
